This invention relates to an improved plant-growth box for accommodating a plurality of seedlings or plants.
Heretofore, shallow, wide, straight-sided, fixed-floored flats were the norm for germination. However, when seedlings grown in such flats have been transplanted, relatively heavy shock has often occurred, even when anti-shock materials such as vitamin B-6 and nutrient additives were used at transplant time. Moreover, these prior-art flats have often not performed well with seeds that were moderate or difficult to germinate. Some crops, such as root crops, were not satisfactorily germinated in such flats; so they were planted directly in the garden, in a permanent spot. Root crops were also started and harvested in various and sundry large pots, all of which were open-topped, with solid walls, and with one or more holes in the fixed bottom.
Many of the prior-art flats and pots were unable to achieve proper aeration. Yet aeration of the growing medium is one of the major ingredients of successful gardening, for the quality and quantity of the food and air available to the roots depends largely on aeration of the compost or composting components in the soil. For the same reason, raised beds are often helpful to the health of the soil in or out of contact with the roots.
The present invention has been developed, in part, in response to important new discoveries in the field of organic gardening. Research done at the University of California at both its Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses, has shown that two factors are particularly important in developing healthy, nutritious and naturally disease-resistant plants. These two factors are: (1) treating the plant and the soil around it as a complete unit, that is, as a bio-dynamic mass, which should receive a minimum of disturbance throughout the plant's growth cycle; (2) employing methods of planting which maximize aeration of the soil, encourage nutrients and micro-organisms within the soil, and contribute to plant strength, and, in the case of plants having edible portions, also to the nutritive value obtainable by human beings.